It's not like Lard's the first one to call me a fool for not wanting to buy Suikoden.=P Pretty much everyone I know who have played the series loves them, but few are willing to explain to my why they're so good in a way that entices me. Luckily, everyone here has been more cooperative than I'm used to, thank you all. I have a strong feeling I'd be better off starting out either the best or easiest to obtain entry in the series that isn't the first and most poorly aged, and so far, it seems that most of that feeling is spot on, still not quite there: While technically the easiest to obtain Tierkris, it would seem that it's not a very wise choice, no? And that the best is Suikoden II, which is also the hardest to obtain? If so, I'll probably just wait to get one of the others cheap or just wait for Suikoden II to get a rerelease or remake. Who knows, Maybe it'll be like Lufia II where I actually find the remake more interesting and fun?

SuikI really hasn't aged that badly, we're not talking about an 8-bit or even 16-bit RPG here.

It's aged poorly compared to other games in the series, and even for a game on the Playstation. At least that's the impression I get, not just from the videos and descriptions but even from what others have told me.

I'm assuming he means gameplay or something, because if he means visuals that IS kind of bullshit. 2D came pretty close to its peak with the SNES games, and Suik1's a step above most of those. I don't really get how it would've aged poorly though, it controls fine, I'm pretty sure that most of what I would want from an interface is there. I guess some of the management of the 108 stars may be cumbersome though, and load times can occasionally be a pain, but both of those are in line with PS1 RPGs generally. This isn't like, say, contrasting FF1 to the SNES games or anything.

It's not like Lard's the first one to call me a fool for not wanting to buy Suikoden.=P Pretty much everyone I know who have played the series loves them, but few are willing to explain to my why they're so good in a way that entices me. Luckily, everyone here has been more cooperative than I'm used to, thank you all. I have a strong feeling I'd be better off starting out either the best or easiest to obtain entry in the series that isn't the first and most poorly aged, and so far, it seems that most of that feeling is spot on, still not quite there: While technically the easiest to obtain Tierkris, it would seem that it's not a very wise choice, no? And that the best is Suikoden II, which is also the hardest to obtain? If so, I'll probably just wait to get one of the others cheap or just wait for Suikoden II to get a rerelease or remake. Who knows, Maybe it'll be like Lufia II where I actually find the remake more interesting and fun?

Again, thanks for your help, all.

I actually kind of got bored of Tierkris part way through and still haven't finished it due to lending my DS to my sister. It's not a bad game, but something about it lost my interest kind of quickly. Maybe I was in a weird mood when I played it though. Also the character models during the battles look ugly. That bothered me a lot.

Pretty much everyone I know who have played the series loves them, but few are willing to explain to my why they're so good in a way that entices me.

It's hard to explain why Suikoden is good because it's just THAT good.Everything is done so well and so perfectly that it's hard to be able to sit down and say "This or that part is why it's good". It's good because it's a good game, plain and simple as that. If you don't like it, you don't like RPG's.

Suiko 1's visuals are good on PSP, not looking so great on a bigger screen now. Suiko 2 still looks good on a decent size screen (32" ish) and some of the effects are outstanding (the hero/Jowy unite move for example). The music holds up really well too.

Pretty much everyone who is a fan of Suikoden doesn't consider Tierkreis to be part of the main series, or have the 'feel' of the main game.

Again I fail to clarify.=P By "aged poorly", I should say "it doesn't impress as much anymore." Which is natural, of course, especially for a long running series, but that's why I rarely, if ever, start a series out with the first game unless I'm looking for a reason to hate said series (see Dragon Quest). I think the only exception so far is Xenosaga, but that's assuming there really is no connection between it and Xenogears. Really, I just need to become familiar enough with the brand so I can feel confident enough in it to purchase the rest of the series.

Anyways, I do recall someone mentioning that Suikoden doesn't do one thing well, it does everything just right. And while that may very well be the case, that's not really what I'm looking for when choosing whether or not to buy a game. I usually prefer to find something knowing that there's an aspect I that I'm sure I'll like and differentiates it from other games that I own. So long as it has that, I know I'll like the game and it'll be worth it, and if any other aspect of the game is also interesting/impressive, then that just makes it that much more worth it.

Not that I don't like it when a game does everything well, quite the contrary, in fact. However, I don't think it's smart to go into a game expecting it to be perfect, especially since I'm so terrible at handling disappointment. Case in point, I still can't get myself to play Nocturne, just because I was expecting it to be played from a First-Person point of view. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not what I expected, but that's still a disappointment. Now try to imagine my disappointment if I went into Suikoden expecting it to be perfect and there turned out to be even one thing wrong! I don't think I'd want to go through with that, so I just try to make sure that the game does at least one think right and hope for the best.

With that said, I looked more into Suikoden III. I don't know why I didn't before. Heck, I thought it was an action-RPG of some sort before I checked it out. Apparently it shows a war from three different sides, which sounds interesting. I don't think I've seen any other game do that, not in a Turn-based, story-focused JRPG at least. That might be worth it if it can pull it off. The combat also sounds fairly unique, as I had hoped. Much more unique than in the first two games, at least. I didn't read too much into it, so I still don't know if I'll like it, but the fact that it's different should make it that much more interesting. SuiV also has some interesting features to its battle system, but not as much as SuiIII, so I think it'd be best if I start with III then hope for the best. Too bad that game's so expensive...

Suiko 1's visuals are good on PSP, not looking so great on a bigger screen now. Suiko 2 still looks good on a decent size screen (32" ish) and some of the effects are outstanding (the hero/Jowy unite move for example). The music holds up really well too.

Pretty much everyone who is a fan of Suikoden doesn't consider Tierkreis to be part of the main series, or have the 'feel' of the main game.

I would certainly recommend a PSP playthrough.I played Suikoden 1 on my PSP two years ago and it is one of my favorite RPGs of all time now.Its a well designed game with plenty of great moments and raising an army against an empire is always fun.

Chinchirorin is only worth it in S1, where you can win max money in about 5 minutes. Every other game disabled the ability to make hilarious profit off of the game, so I kinda lost interest in it after S1.

But man, going from 1000 bits to 999,999 in like three hands of that game was so much fun.